User blog:Dionsama/Sword Eyes Musings
So hey... this is my first blog post here, and since I don't have any other place to talk about Battle Spirits, I might as well rant a bit about it, for maybe someone to read. Warning: lots of spoilers about Sword Eyes. Don't read if you haven't watched the ending yet. Now that Sword Eyes is finished... I'd say there are a few things about the finale that seemed quite off to me. Or more accurately, it felt like a lot of things were "missing". Overall I'd say I didn't enjoy the series very much compared to the previous ones. The weak points of Sword Eyes were, in my opinion: 1) Repetitive battles: just about every fight had virtually the same pattern. 2-3 build-up turns that remained largely the same per character. Summon ace spirit (always the same per character, minus Tsurugi and Yaiba). Summon Sword Brave (if any). Ace spirits battle. Victory. Comparing to Heroes and even earlier series such as Brave (despite Brave's "Brave of the week" pattern getting kind of boring as well), it seems that not much thought was put into the fights at all, and like they didn't even care about showing off new cards aside from Yaiba's and Tsurugi's upgrades. Which means that several cool cards like the SwordSaints and NetherGiants never made an appearance. 2) Fights without weight: we very often saw characters fight for some stakes, and then those stakes become immediately invalidated after the battle, or their importance is diminished. Often characters engage in fights where one party clearly doesn't need to, so it's just an excuse to give usually the Light side a chance. And more often than not, people wage a certain thing on the outcome of a battle, and when that battle is finished, the losing side just does what it wants anyway (again, the Light is by far the usual suspect compared to what you'd think). I don't even have to mention the numerous examples (Sora vs Garudos, Kizakura vs Rirove, Tsurugi vs Gordy, Tsurugi vs Yaiba (first) etc etc) 3) Tsurugi's "fall to darkness": this was literally the most underwhelming "dark side" plot twist in the history of fiction. Tsurugi is sent off to Stoke and becomes the dark red Sword Eyes. And other than a deck change... he is exactly the same as before. He got marginally more serious I guess, but there's no conflict. He just conveniently becomes able to wield both Light and Dark and that's that. This very dull and impactless twist culminates in his final ace spirit, which is literally 'behold as I combine light and dark into the SHINIEST SHINING DRAGON OF ULTIMATE SHINING WITH EXTRA SHINING ON TOP'. Overray's design has -nothing- of dark, its skillset is entirely focused on the Light side's Charge with no Rush (that would've actually made including MidnightSun in Tsurugi's final deck meaningful) and... yeah. Now don't get me wrong, Sword Eyes had its moments, too. Basically character diversity, overarching plot and build-up, and in my opinion the best final villain in Battle Spirits so far (or at the very least the best-voiced one, Garudos' seiyuu did an amazing job throughout and especially delivered during the final battle), some of the animation (again, Garudos' spirits were probably the most imposing ones) and the best battle music since Shounen Gekiha Dan were its strong points. But I just felt that around half the episodes were like 'meh, let's write something up real quick and move on' without real attention paid. Also just saying, but poor Suou got really shafted in this. At least his battle with Rirove should've had more stuff shown. Now moving on to the finale specifically... it is a perfect demonstration of what I mentioned above. The fight was very lackluster and repetitive and mostly consisted of defense card exchanges. Garudos gathered a stupidly large amount of cards in his hand and only ended up utilizing a few of them, which is just very hard to believe. Especially considering that if he had chucked out just one more spirit in his last turn (including the GaiAsura he discarded), he'd have won. I guess arrogance.jpg but still. Also, I know they needed to make it epic and stuff but... come on. All Tsurugi needed to win was Regain. Even if JudgmentDragonis destroyed Overray, it would remain exhausted and the two Braves would have survived, being able to settle the match next turn. There was no need for Sword Destiny or a completely ineffectual barring the power boost MidnightSun, and especially not the extremely random Emerald Field. It's far more dramatic if the character actually NEEDS to pull all that stuff in order to win. On the other hand, epic animation - if you asked me to pick only one screenshot to get someone who has no idea what it's about to watch Battle Spirits, then Re-Genesis floating in front of JudgmentDragonis would be my top pick. Music was top notch and Garudos' voice acting too. And Tsurugi actually killing God (and Garudos as a consequence) was a good development. Some parts, though, leave me skeptical. I had originally assumed the 'God' that Garudos 'listened to' and was eventually taken over by was either a fake God, or Garudos simply being delusional and his power and conviction driving him insane, or that he had somehow 'fallen' from his original benevolent state into a malevolent entity. The first clue was the fact that there were two 'Sword of Judgment' cards - the fake Re-Genesis, which was obviously going to be used by Garudos, and the true / 'good' version Truth Eden, which I assumed would go into Tsurugi's (attempt at) rainbow deck. So like, Truth Eden would be given to Tsurugi by the real 'God', or Tsurugi would gain access to it by channeling all the Sword Braves, and he would use it to beat Garudos and his Re-Genesis. Instead it remained solid that Garudos was indeed possessed by the true God and used Re-Genesis, while Tsurugi won with an awkward combination of Sword Braves. Which made even less sense. A large part of the finale was about humans overcoming God. However, the Sword Braves Tsurugi used to win were created by God in the first place. Grenada even calls them God's swords. So how exactly was it the humans beating God? All they did was use the power God had granted them against him. In all honesty I didn't find the symbolism very successful. The aforementioned parts makes me think that there was a part that was likely scrapped along the process, with remnants of an old plotline, similar to one of the three ideas I mentioned above, remaining. ...also I was expecting more retro stuff, especially Bursts, from Garudos. That one Burst raised my hopes, but ah well. Instead of abusing the same old tired defensive cards that many have used throughout Sword Eyes, seeing Burst Wall from Garudos would have been better. Overall the series felt rather lackluster - a lot of potential, wasted by what looked like poor / lazy execution. It's my least favorite season so far. Not to say I didn't enjoy it, but seeing how well Heroes played out, despite the unpromising original concept, my expectations were raised for this one, which was a shame because, as far as the TCG is concerned, the 'Sword Eyes' saga is excellent. Ah well. Let's see if Ultimate Zero does a better job. Category:Blog posts